INSIDE KNOWLEDGE

Paige Smith brings eight-years of experience at the NFL office to her Host Committee duties

By Hy Cotten

Thursday, July 29, 2010 - 11:38am

Paige Smith moved to New York City eight years ago and, needing a job, walked into the NFL Headquarters in midtown.

Since then, she has helped put on Super Bowls in San Diego, Houston, Jacksonville, Detroit, Miami, the Phoenix area and Tampa.

And now the Brownwood, Texas, native is back home in North Texas — helping put on yet another Super Bowl. But this time, she’s getting a completely different perspective. She’s a member of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee staff.

She might be working on the same game, with many of the same parties, but Paige Smith has never done anything quite like Super Bowl XLV.

“It’s amazing to be on the Host Committee side now, just seeing what it takes to prepare the region,” Smith says. “I had no idea the amount of work that went into the Host Committees. I didn’t work closely with Host Committees at all when I was with the NFL. It’s just amazing the amount of work that gets done in this office to prepare for this one game.”

She had yearned to return to Texas and had interviewed with Bill Lively, the Host Committee’s President & CEO, and other top executives even before the last Super Bowl in February in Tampa.

By April, she was back in Texas with the Host Committee. And her contacts with the NFL league office have been extremely useful. She already knew Frank Supovitz, who puts on Super Bowls for the NFL; Greg Aiello, the league’s publicity czar; Tisha Ford, who oversees the Emerging Business Program; and, on through the NFL staff.

“There’s not a very high turnover rate at the NFL because people love to work there,” Smith says. “Basically, you build a family because you work so many long hours together. For a Super Bowl, we would get there two or three weeks before the game, and you’re just always together. We were all pretty close.”

For the past five years, Smith worked in the NFL’s Entertainment Marketing Department. Her primary focus was helping market the league’s stars.

“I worked with NFL players and their agents and the marketing arm of the players’ union on a lot of issues,” Smith says. “I’d book players for advertising, take a Player To School, handle NFL player needs for any branding or community endeavors.”

She worked with numerous stars: Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, Seattle QB Matt Hasselbeck and New England’s Tom Brady. And such past stars as Marcus Allen and Sterling Sharpe, and many on the NFL Network staff.

Her current duties with the Host Committee include sponsor fulfillment — making certain that the Host Committee is fulfilling its contractual obligations to its Founding Sponsors, other sponsors and associates.

“I’m the day-to-day contact for our sponsors and Founding Sponsors,” Smith says. “I’ll help them with their logo usage and help them integrate their logos with ours. It’s the day-to-day relationship building as their point person.”

Smith works out of the Dallas office and reports directly to Lively. She will keep track of the Host Committee’s assets and oversee the overall handling of assets.

“She understands a lot about how the league operates, and its expectations from Host Committees,” Lively says. “We’re benefitting from that expertise. And then, she’s very, very bright. She clearly grasps what we’re trying to do in an historic way in developing and selling sponsorships.”

That includes maximizing the benefits that sponsors offer the Host Committee, and vice versa.

“Her key knowledge of how to package assets help make them attractive for sponsor candidates of all kinds,” Lively says.

Smith’s friendships and understanding of the NFL proved beneficial when the Host Committee began booking quality acts for the three-part Kick-Off Concert Series coming up in 2010. Smith helped nail down Faith Hill for Fort Worth’s Bass Hall and Sting for Dallas’ AT&T Performing Arts Winspear Opera House.

With the help of an old friend, CAA talent agent Chris Dalston, she worked with musicians’ agents and managers, setting dates and booking the entertainers.

That understanding of the league office has given the North Texas Host Committee an edge.

“You know the right questions to ask,” Smith says. “One of the biggest benefits is knowing who to call. It’s a relatively large office in New York, and I just know who to call for what. I know how things have been done in the past and can give an educated assumption on how they might react to something that we’re doing. Entertainment Marketing was within the Marketing & Sales group, so I have a good understanding of how NFL sponsorships work. I knew those rules and regulations before I got here.”

Paige will be among the North Texas contingent attending this season’s upcoming Super Bowl in South Florida. That will make eight consecutive Super Bowls she has attended.

The one in North Texas will be her ninth. And for a native child of Brownwood to have seen so much of this country on Super Bowl stops alone, the one closest to home will likely always be the one closest to her heart. Now that she’s seen Super Bowls from both sides.